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www.efmd.org/globalfocus
How can business schools help to prepare tomorrow’s leaders? The first step for business schools preparing tomorrow’s leaders is the same as that required of today’s leaders: recognising that the tools and approaches that worked in the past may not be sufficient in future. Business education, just like many other industries, is facing increasing cross-industry competition, more demanding consumers and financial pressures. Future success – both for business schools and their clients and students – will require understanding and shaping of what it will take to compete in an environment built around ambiguity and contradiction. It will be dependent on engagement and it will emphasise the need for co-creating new answers rather than relying on traditional remedies; it must also recognise the growing importance of purpose and meaning. Essentially, the reinvention challenge is two-fold – reinvent the business school and reinvent how it helps clients achieve future success. Relinquishing outdated approaches and building new ones fit for the future will not be easy for executives nor for business schools. But perhaps the most important challenge is recognising that preparing leaders to lead tomorrow’s businesses is a journey, one that not only affects the leaders being trained but the educational institutions that do the training.
Perhaps the most important challenge is recognising that preparing leaders to lead tomorrow’s businesses is a journey, one that not only affects the leaders being trained but the educational institutions that do the training
If business schools want to step up to this challenge, they need to move beyond the traditional classroom environment and burgeoning business of webinars to: • focus on what it is going to take for leaders (and their businesses) to succeed in the future not what has worked in the past • move from providing lecturers on knowledge to co-creating answers that are personally relevant for tomorrow’s leaders • view education not as a series of episodic events that provide answers but as a continuous process of learn-understand-co-create-apply-learn • understand that preparing tomorrow’s leaders is a human process. The world is becoming more complex, ambiguous and connected. Relationships and support networks in education are as important as in any other sphere of life. It is time for business schools to practise what they preach and do the same thing we are asking organisations to do. Come down from the ivory tower and become partners in co- creating tomorrow’s leaders.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Thomas Malnight is professor of strategy and general management at IMD, Lausanne, Switzerland. Tracey Keys is the director of Strategy Dynamics Global SA, a consultancy. They are also the authors and publisher of The Global Trends Report 2013 (www.GlobalTrends.com) and of Ready: The 3Rs of Preparing Your Organization for the Future, with co-author Kees van der Graaf (www.3RsReady.com).